Welcome to my e-portfolio! The site is organized by the areas I work in…and want to work in.

You see, I am a writer and editor who is quite good at learning and using new technologies. My background also includes teaching at the college level, working in educational publishing, and providing adult education workshops and seminars (including technical and systems training).

Now I work as a freelance writer and editor for research organizations, academic journals, and educational publishers. I love this work! But I also want to augment it with doing more technical training. Specifically, I want to introduce small and medium sized businesses, or self-employed workers, to the resources provided by open source software, online cloud-based applications, and other emerging technologies. I’m particularly influenced by Harold Jarche, Jane Hart, George Siemens, and other practitioners who seek new ways to help people learn. These new ways, I believe, go beyond traditional training and workshops. I am in the midst (here as of April 2013) of trying to articulate what I want to do. It may include creating local family-based computer help (parents and children learning together); it may include one-on-one training with someone identified in their workplace as the go-to person for software help (enhancing social learning).

My best skill set is that I learn technology very quickly and I am successful at turning that knowledge around to help others. I think it’s to my benefit that I’m not a traditional “IT person”: I’m a very good technology user, so I can show and explain things in a way that meets the user where she is. I have always been that go-to technology person in the corporate environments I’ve worked in because of these skills. Now I want to be that go-to technology person for businesses who don’t yet have one!

More About Me

When I earned my doctorate in American Culture Studies in 1995, I had taught Women’s Studies for three years and also had four years’ experience teaching college composition courses. As a graduate student, I had published papers in peer-reviewed journals and presented at many academic conferences. I was also one of the moderators of an early (1993) online listserv, the Sixties-List (and an early HyperCard afficianado). But all this work did not help me when the humanities job market tanked.

Since then I’ve cobbled together an employment history that includes work as a

Proofreader

Part-time community college instructor

Copy editor

Customer relationship manager

Trainer

Documentation specialist

Communications coordinator

Director of programs

Grant writer

Project editor

Etc.

And along the way I have encountered many new technologies that I related on my personal learning environment map. Since the explosion of what some folks call “Web 2.0,” however, I’ve realized just how much I enjoy learning new applications and finding uses for them (as well as evangelizing about them, in many cases). This is why I want to use my fairly decent communication skills in the service of increasing the digital literacy (comfort, understanding, and use) of the people around me.